When it comes to testing mandates, we exercise our rights
as
parents to protect our children from activities not in their
interests.

When it comes to testing mandates, we exercise our
rights as parents to protect our children from activities not in
their interests.

When district- or state-mandated testing comes around in our
children's public schools, we opt out. We inform our kids' teachers and
principal in writing that we do not want our children taking the tests.
Each year, for the past six years, our requests have been respectfully
accommodated.

This isn't a decision we make lightly. Schools have important work
to do in the area of reform: to better challenge and engage all
children. But when it comes to testing mandates, we exercise our rights
as parents to protect our children from activities not in their
interests. In our view, such tests diminish the work of teaching and
ask children to carry the burden of building public confidence in
schools.

The purpose of mandated tests is to provide a snapshot of student
performance in a way that informs school decisionmakers, parents, and
community members. These groups need a way to determine what students
know and how well schools work in order to make knowledgeable
decisions. Our belief, however, is that any decision based solely on
the results of a mandated test, even a well-designed test with proven
reliability, is a poorly informed decision. The snapshot of learning
that comes from such tests is too incomplete a picture. It's a moment
in time, a shot taken from a single, distant angle.

We think it's imperative to have a more complete
understanding— for the picture to contain multiple perspectives
over time, that it be well-focused, true to color, and capable of both
wide-angle view and close-up detail. We don't want decisions about what
is taught, how schools perform, how to support students, or which kids
graduate to be made from anything less than that.

A high-stakes testing environment, we have seen repeatedly,
generates an unproductive tension for teachers, tension between what
they know about their students and what they must do for the sake of
the test. Teachers may feel pressure to cover material quickly, or
earlier, to fit the testing schedule, rather than a developmental
sequence. Innovative units are reduced, or come to an end, so that test
preparation can begin. Families are encouraged to make sure their kids
"eat well" and "get a good night's sleep" before testing days (what
about learning days?).

A high-stakes testing environment, we have seen
repeatedly, generates an unproductive tension for teachers.

These are well-intended efforts. But as schools carry out their
mandated testing, they are forced to shift their energies away from
what educators know about kids and learning and toward representing
themselves in simplistic ways for public consumption. We believe,
further, that many adults working in schools recognize this
oversimplification. But they're in a difficult place to object. Such
objections must come from outside the schools.

Typically, we submit a letter to the school that reads something
like this:

We would like to request that our child not participate in the
Washington Assessment of Student Learning testing this spring. We
understand that the district is mandated to collect such test data.
However, we prefer that our daughter be engaged in learning
activities during testing times.

We've discussed our decision with our daughter and her
teachers, and we are working together to develop a plan for her
during testing times that will work for everyone.

Thank you for considering our request. We appreciate the
positive and rich learning environment that you help create and
support at [our school].

In our letter, we support those who educate our children, affirming
that we trust what they know about students more than what a
company-scored test can reveal. During Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and
WASL testing in recent years, our kids' teachers have allowed them to
work on meaningful alternative activities— activities we believe
are more geared to their learning needs. Last year, during mandated
testing, our son worked on a story he's been writing avidly about two
parakeets like the ones he has at home. In 4th grade, a testing year in
our state, our daughter did an independent project about sea
animals.

Many argue that mandated tests are a step in the right direction.
They move instruction to a higher level, motivate students, and
encourage complex problem- solving skills. We see some evidence of
this, but we aren't encouraged. The collateral costs are simply too
high. In our state, the WASL's ability to effect change in schools
comes from the power it has, even as a criterion- referenced test, to
cast students as winners and losers. We do not want our children cast
in either role.

We are not against standards. We support the kinds of
student assessment needed to make sound educational decisions within
a classroom.

Winners receive the unproductive message that learning is about
making the cut. They are applauded precisely because the standard is
set so high—in other words, high enough to ensure that there will
be losers. And losers are designated as substandard. The reform process
is properly invested in students who need more motivation, support, and
challenge. But there are others in this losing group already motivated
for school, well-taught, and learning in a manner consistent with their
abilities and needs. Here, the rhetoric of test- based reform omits a
disturbing reality: Its gains come at the painful expense of such
students—that is, those responding to school appropriately but
now designated as inadequate. To subject any learner to such collateral
costs, and to ignore, minimize, or sugarcoat the effects, is, in our
view, a misuse of administrative power.

We are not against standards. We support the kinds of student
assessment needed to make sound educational decisions within a
classroom. We believe every child can be challenged to exceed his or
her own expectations. We are compelled to speak out, however, when
parents and community members are led to believe that the best way to
address these issues is for children to prepare for and complete hours
of mandated testing. Our job as parents, as we see it, is to insist
that community leaders respond thoughtfully to failures and dilemmas in
schools—in ways that avoid oversimplification. We withdraw our
support from practices that expect children to pay the price for
improving public confidence in schools. That's why we opt out—to
preserve the best of what public schools have to offer our kids.

Fred L. Hamel and Catherine Ross Hamel have two children in the
public schools in Tacoma, Wash. Ms. Hamel is a speech-language
pathologist in Tacoma-area schools. Mr. Hamel is an assistant professor
of education at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

Fred L. Hamel and Catherine Ross Hamel have two children in the public
schools in Tacoma, Wash. Ms. Hamel is a speech-language pathologist in
Tacoma-area schools. Mr. Hamel is an assistant professor of education
at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

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